ANGUS, THE LITTLE BOY WITH THE BIG (SHEEP’S) HEART

On our last day in Tobermory, aka Balamory (look it up on YouTube), we decided to just roam the town, buy some swag from our new favourite now-defunct foreign kids show, and partake of local customs.  Since we’d already played in the cemetery and checked out the boats in the rain, lunch under the clock tower was all that remained.

Fish was the only thing on the menu, sold from the Fishermen’s Pier Fresh Fish & Chips truck beside the tower.  Not surprisingly, the fresh fish shack was not yet open when we arrived (at noon, which is high time for a good meal for most people, I might add).  Once Fisherman opened his shack, a lineup formed instantaneously, and so I had the task of keeping the kids occupied while Trevor ‘queued up’. 

Luckily, there was Angus.  His mom had already purchased their fish meal and she parked herself next to us on the ledge of the clock tower where everyone and their cats came to eat and be friendly.  Young Angus refused to sit next to her, but invaded our space instead.  Shawn recognized him right away as a kindred spirit.

“What’s your name?” Shawn asked the little boy.  Angus was shy (or perhaps couldn’t understand our accent) so eventually his mom had to pipe up.  “Angus,” she said.

“Hi Haggis!  I’m Shawn,” my son chirped.

“His name is Angus,” I whispered to Shawn.

“Do you like cars, Haggis?”  Without waiting for an answer, Shawn burst into his best Finn McMissile persona, screeching noises and all, to impress his new friend.

For those of you who do not know what haggis is, it is a traditional Scottish dish made with sheep stomach and chopped up sheep’s and/or lamb’s heart and lungs.  It is much like ground hamburger meat, but more the consistency of Taco Bell.

Thankfully, the BBC Food Recipes website recommends cleaning and thoroughly scalding the stomach, and turning it inside out and soaking it overnight in cold, salted water before stuffing it with its neighbouring organs and the remaining ingredients, then boiling the whole sack for three hours.  Also, one must sew up the stomach sack with strong thread and prick it in a few places so it doesn’t explode with heat.

Back at the clock tower, I was horribly embarrassed.  I corrected Shawn over and over but he simply looked bemused at my petty ramblings on.  The next 20 minutes was a flurry of “Haggis , what country are you from?” “Haggis, do you want to splash through this puddle?” and “Hey, Daddy!  This boy’s three and his name is Haggis.”

I apologized to his mom.  She said nothing.  She was from Slovakia, had married a Scot and was now living in this country.  She told me Angus was learning her mother tongue but would go to Gaelic school next year.  With any luck, neither of them had any idea what Shawn was saying.

Eventually Angus and his mother said their goodbyes and headed off to their afternoon agenda.  Shawn and Annabeth continued to enjoy the lone puddle to survive the gorgeous sunny day, and I finished off the breaded fish and reflected upon our dinner at a pub the night before, when a Scottish couple had taken a liking to Shawn and the husband in particular had sat with him and took dictation while Shawn planned out a menu of his favourite foods.  When I dug out the menu, it all fell into place: bread and butter, peas and cucumbers, and Shawn’s newest friend, “Haggis.”

 

THIS POST IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION

The colourful buildings of Tobermory...



Window shopping at such a young age!



Shawn took most of the photos of the colourful buildings. 



The clock tower where it all began.  No haggis in sight.

There he is!  In the grey sweat pants and sky-blue shirt!

Angus attempts to muscle in our fish.



 



Fresh fish!



 

Lobster traps at the pier in Tobermory, Island of Mull, Scotland.

We stayed at the hotel on the hill.  In the TV show Balamory, this hotel is depicted as a pink castle.  We were all a little disappointed to find it was just a beautiful hotel.

Low tide... 

Downtown Tobermory includes the church tower, the clock tower, the bell tower on the hill, etc.

Highland cows, known locally as "hairy coos," are the cutest darn bovines you ever did see.  :)



Fish time continues.



 

One needs a dose of this after driving the single-tracks roads on the island.



Photos from the ferry...



Approaching land.

A view of Duart Castle from the ferry.

 

We bought this book in Tobermory.  It is the story of a bear...

...that gets picked up by a seagull and flown from his home on an island, over the mainland town of Oban wear you catch all the ferries to the islands...

...far, far away to Edinborough...

...and hung out to dry on Tobermory (see our clock tower in the distance)...

...after having sunk to the bottom of the sea in and amongst all the CRAZY-SHAPED seaweed and kelp that eventually washes up on the beaches and looks like something straight out of 1975 Dr. Who...

...because the kids who own him forgot him on the beach (that is right against the farm of cows, that is surrounded by a stone wall)...

...after they have been building him a castle with flags of the many countries to which the early Scots immigrated.

Annabeth can pick out our hotel on the top of the hill when we read this book.  :-)

This is Hackus, one of the newest Happy Meal Smurfs.  Bet you can guess what Shawn and Annabeth call him.

(stay tuned for photos of Shawn’s menu).

YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT NOW?

Being that we were on our way to a four-month lifestyle change deep in the heart of France, we had been planning many ways to tackle the language barrier.  But happily, for the first portion of our trip anyway, we could put those concerns out of our minds and just breathe it all in....

....Ahhh, Scotland!  So far, we loved Scotland.  We loved the friendly people, loved the castles, loved the scenery and we stopped to gab with the locals every chance we got.

        We even loved grocery shopping, particularly in Greenoch where we found a Tesco grocery store with a Travelator.  Travelators are the coolest contraption ever: they’re like escalators, but smooth.  Like the moving sidewalks one would find at the airport, but they go UP to the second floor.  Incredibly, they also go back DOWN, and are somehow specially formatted so that your grocery cart does not even slip an inch.
       That’s more than I can say for my son, who tried very hard to slip down the Travelator, but I digress.
       We started our grocery shopping journey by riding the Travelator up to the second level where we expected to find housewares and maybe some toys for the kids.  But quel surpris, there was a restaurant, too, and boy oh boy were we excited.
       “I’ll grab us some coffees and you go look for some toys,” I said to Trevor.  “You want a cappuccino?”
       “No, just black,” he replied. 
       I practically skipped to the lunch counter to review the menu of hot beverages.  I didn’t see anything that said ‘Americano’, which is European slander for ‘black coffee that no European would be caught dead drinking’.  But!  I did spy a man carrying a tray with a cup of coffee on it, and it looked kind of black.  It was too big to be an espresso, but not frothy enough to be a latte.  I took a stab.  “Excuse me, sir, what kind of coffee is that?” 
       “Blah blah mumble,” he told me. 
       “Pardon me?” I asked. 
       “It’s a mumble mumble blah blah,” he said.  I eyed his slightly foamy coffee suspiciously.  Not fancy enough to be a cap.
       I placed my order.  “I’ll have what that man is drinking, but without the foamy part on top,” I said.
      “You mean a blah blah mumble?”  Yes, I nodded, I meant that.
The lunch counter lady disappeared and re-appeared in ten seconds with a foamy coffee.  “No, I’m sorry, I meant ‘Americano’,” I said politely.
       “This is mumble mumble mumble,” she told me.
       “But it’s foamy…”
       “Did you want espresso?”  I did not.  “Latte?”  I did not.  “Then you want barely audible blah blah.”
       “But I don’t want the foam,” I explained in earnest.  Something about her accent and Coffee Man’s accent was harder to understand than all the previous Scottish accents I’d heard, and I began to suspect that one of us was not on the same page... 
       We stumbled through a few more exchanges before I learned that the coffee at the lunch counter came out of a machine rather than a pot, and machines in Scotland create just enough fake foam to really trick a foreigner.  
         Ultimately, it looked yucky. “Well….okay, I guess I’ll have that,” I finally decided.  “To go, please.”
       “We don’t have take away,” the lady replied.  I hesitated for what I’m sure was just a few seconds.  “We don’t have take away.”
       Aha!  I thought to myself (lightbulb, lightbulb).  “Why not?” I blurted out. 
       “I don’t have any take away cups.”
       “Can I buy a take away cup and bring it back to you?” I finally asked, squinting my eyes in concentration.  Boy, one had to really get one’s wheels turning to figure out this coffee stuff.
       Lunch Lady sounded like she had never heard of this idea, but she said she supposed I could.  No, she didn’t know if the store sold take away cups. 
       But the best was yet to come, for the checkout lineups were long and the kids were getting rambunctious.  Trevor and I were tired, and our shopping cart was full.  After scanning a dozen of our items, Cashier Girl turned to me and said, “Yawhametahepyabahgythings.”
       “Pardon me?” I asked. 
       “Dyawhametahepyaputbahgyin,” she repeated, almost.
       “Um… I’m sorry, I still didn’t quite catch that,” I said, smiling.  She spoke again.  I strained to listen for inflections in her voice that would help me understand her, but there were no telltale signs of what the heck she was talking about. 
       She cocked her head.  I cocked mine.  She yawned.  I squinted.  Who was this, Lunch Lady’s sister?
       “JuswuhndahniyawhanIshouldhehwidyabahgs.”
       I turned to Trevor in exasperation but he had nothing to say.  So I gave it my all: “Once more?...“I can’t quite understand.”…”You want me to do what now?” 
       Shawn and Annabeth had already noticed me engaging in adult conversation and so were busy whining for food, taking things out of the cart, pushing each other and generally dropping onto the floor in fits of self-absorbency.  I could barely hear Cashier Girl anymore.
       “Mumble mumble bah blah blah y’a bah,” she said.  I was at my wit’s end and still wondering silently whether I’d done something horribly wrong with my victuals. 
       “It’s just that there’s so much noise,” I offered, in desperation.  She did not acknowledge my plight, and there were still no suggestions from my husband. 
       “Blah blah IsehyawhanIshould mumble mumble hehwidyabahgs.”
        “Could you please say that just a little more slowly?” I begged.
       “Bahgs,” Cashier Girl iterated, at last.  “D’you.. wah… mee… ta… ‘elp… ye… wi… yer  bahgs??”
       Well, I hardly felt I could accept assistance at this point, and so I bahged my own groceries and the four of us headed for the door.
       It was at this point that my dear husband, Trevor, who had not said a word throughout the entire exchange, turned to me and asked ever so offhandedly, “Do you know what’s really funny?”  He didn’t wait for my reply but burst out grinning: “When you can’t understand someone who’s speaking the same language.” 

This man has no clear reverence for the Travelator.  We don't know whether or not he mumbles.

 

 

 

This is so much funnier when I upload it as a photo rather than as a video: it plays continuously and gives you a true image of Shawn's Travelator antics that day.

 

[stay tuned for photos of Greenoch and people we could understand.]

Who Are the People in Your Neighbourhood?

Before leaving Canada, we spent some time exploring our neighbourhood.  What did we like about our neighbourhood?  What made us happy?  What might be interesting to someone on the other side of the world?

Sometimes I had the camera, sometimes Shawn did.  And sometimes we handed it over to Shawn's friends and/or their little sisters.   We thank them all for their contributions.

In addition to being able to show these to new friends that we meet, what I really love about this activity is being able to go back and look at the photos and videos with the kids, now that we are already in France and have traveled so much.  We compare our old neighbourhood to our new one, and we laugh at pictures of ourselves and our family.  Mostly, we just smile a lot.



Our house...



...is a very, very, very fine house.



With two kids in the yard...



This is where Shawn's friend used to live before she moved to another neighbourhood.

Stop!  In the name of the law! 



Every time we take our bikes around the block, we pass this and I admire it. 



Hi Keegan's Mom!  Thanks for letting us stop and play.

We took some small everyday housewares with us to make to kids feel at home in their new France house.

Ah